• unreasonabro@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    did your town actually do anything for them or just say “hey fuck you go to this hill and stay there”

    like did they follow any of the recommendations scientists make or even make one effort to do it correctly? having studied this for years, the answer is usually no

    • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.today
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      4 months ago

      Not sure, but I’m guessing likely not. There were a lot more encampments around here last year, but many of them were in places that were either unsafe (such as freeway greenbelts) or privately owned (but accessible to the public). Apparently they did tolerate this one camp, however, because it didn’t have any of those issues, but it’s still turning into a festering sore at this point.

      I honestly don’t know what would help here, but all the solutions that I see being discussed on Lemmy always just seem to revolve around giving people free stuff, and I don’t think that’ll solve anything in the long term. Unless you show people a path to becoming self-sufficient, all you’ll ever accomplish is feeding or housing them for a day. While I realize that depending on how deep in the hole someone is, it might take a long time before they feel safe enough again to take risks, but ultimately, unlimited amounts of free stuff will only create dependency.

      • unreasonabro@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        inadequate measures were inadequate; nobody surprised

        The idea that you’re independent is an illusion. Independence and the aspiration to it are usually just lies we tell ourselves to justify this stupid cruel system we’re using.

        What are you independent from? If your grocery store runs out of food you’re still as fucked as anybody else. And in the next few years it’s likely to. There’s no such thing as independence from food. We throw out so much fucking food in this culture, but if we gave it to those guys we’d be acknowledging that feeding people is supposed to be the point of food, rather than making money, and in this culture we cannot have that, that’s an unthinkable thought.

        As far as I can tell the people in those encampments just tend to be people nobody gives a shit about. That’s true independence, in a sense, but I don’t think that should be an aspiration, do you? And isn’t that one of the only actual useful functions of government, to create systems to take care of those people? I mean it’s not like they’re regulating businesses properly… anyway that’s another discussion.